Druids as tanks
thumb|The Druid Bear Form Shapeshift into a bear, increasing Attack Power by 3 * level, Armor contribution from items by 180%/360%, and Health by Y. Also protects the caster from polymorph effects and allows the use of various bear abilities. When a warrior wants to do DPS instead of tanking or a warrior isn't available, the druid can enter bear form and take the role of Tanking. This article is not yet finished!! The Bear Form The druid has two tanking forms: Bear Form obtained by quest at level 10 and Dire Bear Form obtained at level 40. The forms are the same except that Dire Bear has an even greater armor boost compared to bear form. The Bear Form is the druid tank form. When a druid shapeshiftes in to bear the following things happen: * Health: The Druids base health is increased by 20% * Attack Power: The Druid gains Attack Power equal to his level * 3 (180 Attack at level 60). * Armor: The druid gains a 180%/360% armor boost from items (depending on Bear/Dire Bear form). The bonus is additive, meaning that if you have 1000 armor from items, Bear form will grant you: 1000 + 1000 * 1.8 = 2800 armor from items, while Dire Bear will grant you 1000 + 1000 * 3.6 = 4600 armor. * Threat (Agro): The druid will obtain a 30% increase in Threat generated. This is the same bonus that the warrior is granted by Defensive Stance. And depending on talents the following effects take place: * With 5/5 Heart of the Wild, Tier 6 Feral Combat: Stamina is increased by 20% granting an additional Health boost. * With 5/5 Feral Instinct, Tier 2 Feral Combat: Threath generated is increased by 15% while in Bear Form (Threath modifier goes from 30% to 45%). * With 3/3 Sharpened Claws, Tier 3 Feral Combat: Critical Strike chance is increased by 6% while in Bear Form. * With 3/3 Predatory Strikes, Tier 4 Feral Combat: Attack Power in increased by 150% of level (to a max of 90 Attack Power at level 60). * With 2/2 Primal Fury, Tier 4 Feral Combat: The druid gains 5 rage for every crit he does in Bear Form. * With 5/5 Furor, Tier 1 Restoration: The druid gains 5 Rage everytime he switches to Bear/Dire Bear Form. Bears and Warriors So far a druid has tanked every raid instance currently available (not counting Ahn'Quiraj) and every boss except Nefarion (not possible because of his Class Call). A druid is in itself a very viable tank. A warrior is mostly considered the best tank, and they are by right so, but a druid still gets very close. We will now go through the different aspects of tanking, comparing warriors and druids. ' Damage Migitation ' This is the most important aspect of tanking, the ability to take as little damage as possible. Warrior and druid damage migitation works in different ways. Druids tend to have a very high amount of armor (best druids reach 14-15k unbuffed while the best warriors reach 9k unbuffed in all out epic gear with an epic shield). This means druid generally tend to take less damage for each hit done to the druid. Therefore druid damage migitation is very reliable and easy to heal, since it doesn't take as serious spike damage but soak up the incoming damage with a high amount of armor. So warriors generally has lower armor, but they compensate for this in almost every way: * Shield: The ability to wear a shield enables the warrior to block some of the incoming damage (the best epic warriors block for around 200 damage max). Block don't accur at every enemy attack, but block chance can be significantly boosted by the Shield Block ability and by aquirering a massive amount of +defence. * Defensive Stance damage modifier: The warrior takes 10% less damage, both from magical and physical attacks. This helps lower the gap between Druid and Warrior armor rating. * Parry: The warrior generally has alot of +defense equipment available. This not only gives the superior dodge abilities compared to the druid, but the ability to parry is something the druid will never get a replacement for. There is no doubt that the warrior takes less damage than a druid assuming equal tanking gear. The heavy reliance on avoiding the hits entirely however, makes the warrior take more spikey damage. Some people discuss what is the better part, but generally the warrior is the better choice since the defensive stance bonus reduces the magical damage recieved (Example: Shadow Flame in BWL deals a significant amount of damage that warrior defensive stance helps migitate). The heavy amount fo +defence available to warriors also helps avoiding critical strikes from mobs. While druids can also reach a good amount of +defence (for a perfectly geared tank druid, his defense skill lies around 350-380). A druid can't avoid most attacks forcing them to simply rely on their armor and HP pool. ' Agro generation ' This is a very debated area of druid versus warrior. However gathering druid experiences has given a clear result, druid long term agro generation is simply greater than warriors. Many might find it hard to believe that the supposed best tank class is being beaten in agro generation, but explanation follows. Druid and warrior agro generation works different. Warrior agro generation works with "innate" agro. This means that the amount of agro drawn is fixed. Try to take a naked warrior with a 1 DPS weapon and the worst shield in the game, and an all out epiced warrior with Thunderfury. Sure the better equipped warrior is gonna draw more agro because he does more damage, but each warrior is gonna draw the EXACT same amount of agro with Sunder Armor, Revenge, Shield Bash simply because these abilities are fixed (warrior stance affects the agro generated by abilities like Sunder Armor though, since the agro bonus for defensive stance applies to all skills). The only ability that would make a difference for the two warriors is Heroic Strike because it is also affected by base damage. As of patch 1.9 it is possible though to archieve new books in Ahn'Qiraj granting new ranks of different warrior agro abilities. So far a new rank of Revenge and Heroic Strike has been confirmed to exist. Druid agro generation works different however. It has been tested and confirmed that druids generate agro this way: damage * Bear form agro bonus = agro generated The bear form agro bonus is 1.30 - 1.45 depending on the Feral Instinct rank. However while warrior agro works with innate (fixed) values, druid agro works by a multiplier. Chibi, Gnome Warrior on Shadow Moon (US) performed some very accurate agro tests with druids to uncover how much agro maul/swipe generated. The tests can be found here: As we can see the maul and swipe has a modifier of 1.75 compared to normal white damage when used. Archieving maul crits of 800+ versus raid bosses is very much possible. Lets take the number 400 non-crit to make the calculations easy: 400 * 1.75 * 1.45 = 1015 This means that for every maul hit a druid performs with that damage, a mage (without BoS/Tranq Air totem and no Arcane Subletly) would have do perform 1015 damage to generate the same amount of agro. Now mages with very powerfull gear might be doing 700-800 average non-crit frostbolts every 2.5 seconds (same timer as maul). This means that even with that damage a mage would (before any agro decreasing buffs) still generate around 20-25% less agro. In addition, 700-800 non-crit would be around the current maximum for mage damage (not counting ZHC/ToeP every 1,5 minutes). However mauls doing 400 damage on raid bosses are not maximum. With raid blessings (Battle Shout, Blessing of Might/Strength of Earth Totem) a druid can reach mauls for up to 550 non-crit (without flasks etc.). Combine that with using swipe as rage dumb (around 80 damage after migitation = 80 * 1.75 * * 1.45 = around 200 white damage agro before agroblessings on raid members). The last thing to account for is critrate. Even in tanking gear a 11/33/7 specced druid will reach a critchance of around 25% unbuffed. Maul crit = Double damage = Double agro on 25% of all mauls performed = 25% extra agro output. So druid agro can reach very high amounts since its damagebased. This also means that druid agro benefit more from damage increasing buffs, as well as armor reducing debuffs like Sunder Armor/Expose Armor and Faerie Fire benefit the druid more when applied to a trashmob/boss. This doesn't mean that druid agro is overall greater. Warriors have a things druids don't have: Snap Agro. Since most warrior agro generating abilities are instant a Taunt followed by 2 instant Sunder Armor can pull a mob back after the warrior lost agro. A druid has one instant ability that is meant to be used optimally against 2-3 targets. Swipe takes quite an amount of rage versus one enemy and doesn't generate that much agro if its not spamable (used with Primal Fury and a good critchance you can spam swipe forever versus 3 enemies, you simply won't run out of rage unless you use maul in between). If a druid uses Maul right after a taunt the miss chance can be fatal. In addition, the druid AOE taunt requires 15 rage while the Warrior AOE taunt requires only 5 rage. ' Knockbacks ' For most parts druids have the advantage here. Feral Charge doesn't require Stance Dance, takes lesser rage than Intercept and has a cooldown of 15 seconds (Intercept requires at least 22 talent points in Fury to have the same cooldown). ' Fear ' The best superiority of warrior versus druid for tanking. Some encounters requires fear eliminating abilities. Horde warriors are for the most part forced to Stance Dance with Berserker Rage ever 30 seconds (effectively giving the warrior fear immunity one third of the time he is tanking). Unless you play alliance and have Fear Ward available in large amounts, Berserker Rage definatly play a big part in the warrior tank superiority. ' Disarm ' If a warrior gets a weapon chain this is practically even, and as far as i know, no bosses uses disarm yet. Besides that, druids have the advantage, though its not important. ' O'Crap buttons ' The second important part of warrior superiority, i might as well name all O'Shit buttons here: * Healing Potions * Last Stand * Shield Wall/Retaliation/Recklessness * Other kind of potions (Rage potions, Greater X Protection Potion etc.) * Healthstones * Trinkets (as of patch 1.10 druids are able to use trinkets and other equipped items like Lifegiving Gem in Bear Form) Druids simply can't use those abilities in Bear Form, giving the warrior another large advantage. Druids can still consume flasks etc. before a fight and maintain the buffs in bear form. ' Weapon Procs ' A small warrior advantage. Druids can't get "Chance on Hit" procs on weapons (works for trinkets though) to work. The same applies to weapon buffs. Windfury Totem and Crusader etc. is therefore totally out of the question. ' Polymorphing Bosses ' This is probably gonna be introduced sooner or later (if not already there, im not 100% sure). When a tank is polymorphed he loses agro. This is sort of the druid counter to fear since druids are completely immune to polymorph in Bear Form, while warriors can counter fear. ' Attack Speed Slowing ' With no instant abilities except Swipe and Faerie Fire (Feral) a druid is weakened when his attack speed is slowed and will generate alot less agro per hit.